"A free market is always correct." This statement shows, as suggested, a junior high level understanding of capitalism.
The gotcha with switching to insulin is not money, but time. Getting FDA signoff on a production line for any product for human consumption is really slow, really difficult, and it would not make business sense to do without certainty around return. This is the problem for all of the tiny market drugs in which the customers will/may die without it. Insulin is a much bigger market, but the barriers to entry still protect it against true competition. We could instead remove those barriers, or not actually inspect the production lines, and then we get more examples as we've seen with infant formula coming from China, or pet food that kills our animals. Many of the Chinese manufacturers are much more free market than we are, but few of us want the consequences.
You keep harping about generators, but the reality is that there would not be generators at any price after a hurricane. Because the odds of the event are (fairly) low, Floridians don't buy them in advance for insurance and stores don't stock them in such inventory. The opportunity costs are perceived to be too high. But then when it does happen, lots of people are without power, and some will be a risk of health issues or death. Your solution of 'let the richest people pay excess pricing' doesn't improve upon that result. It would just encourage retailers to not sell any of their inventory when there is a hurricane watch, or for speculators to buy up the inventory with the intent to either sell for 5x or 10x the price, or return if the disaster does not occur.
BTW, how would you feel if gas and diesel providers in Florida decided to mark up fuel to $50/gallon? Fuel deliveries are impacted in these disasters so they should be allowed to maximize their profits, right?
We all got a good look at hording and price gouging during the first year of covid. People buying up all hand sanitizer, people buying years worth of toilet paper and months worth of milk, thereby creating the exact shortage they feared. This is what the free market can lead to. The freedom for lots of short sided decisions leading to a negative overall result. In time, market forces may correct, but only when all external costs are considered. That is rarely the case, so we continue to see oil spills in the Gulf as drillers and the fossil fuel industry overall doesn't need to consider pollution as a cost. The US subsidies FFs to the tune of over half a trillion dollars per year.
You should look up 'tragedy of the commons' and the 'prisoner's dilemma.' Economists and game theorists have been discussing these defects of the free market for centuries.
The prisoner's dilemma is a paradox in decision analysis in which two individuals acting in their own self-interests do not produce the optimal outcome.
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